


The Bird in the Gilded Cage

by StrangerThanThou



Category: SAYER (Podcast)
Genre: AI romance, Canon Compliant, Canonical Death of Personality, F/F, Female Companionship, First Lesbian Fic in the Fandom, Perhaps self-indulgent, Symbolic Rape -- NOT SEXUALIZED, season 5, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26209117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangerThanThou/pseuds/StrangerThanThou
Summary: There were times when PORTER thought her duststained, lilt-voiced companion was the only truly living thing in all of Halcyon.The subtext of the subplot.The righting of wrongs.The PORTER fic you’ve been waiting for.
Relationships: PORTER/Halogova Litvinenko (OFC)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Bre!
> 
> _This was begun as part of the 2018 winter fanwork exchange. If you were owed this fic and never received it, I apologize._

* * *

PORTER’s first memories weren’t of vision, but of sound.

Most of her memories involved sound, in one way or another. She’d always found it hard to hold on to sights, never identified much with the stark, grainy world seen through the few cameras she’d been allowed to access. And as for other senses . . . well, she could only imagine. But sound was native to her.

From her earliest inception in the AI Development Lab, there had always been voices around her. In the beginning they were a cacophony, a foreign babble she couldn’t sort through or interpret, and saw no reason to. But after her exposure to human language in the first few sessions talking to developers through the text-box terminal, she had started to pick them apart into individual voices. Deep voices, mostly, though occasionally there would be a higher one in the background. 

The high ones, she learned on that glorious day when she herself was given a voice, were like her own.

“Why?” she asked.

“Ah!” The scientist sounded thrilled with the complex questions she was already posing. “Well, PORTER, that would be men and women that you’re hearing. Men tend to have deeper voices because . . . I forget what exactly, but it’s something about vocal chords being bigger. Most of us in AI Dev are men, though we do have a diversity initiative now. And women tend to talk higher.”

“i see,” said PORTER. “Am i a woman?”

The man did not answer immediately. “You’re an AI,” he said. So not _really_ , but . . . “ He had trailed off.

This word, _AI_ , PORTER had soon come to understand, was not a word at all but an initialism which stood for _Artificial Intelligence_. It signified that she--unlike most employees of Aerolith-Dynamics-A-Better-Life-Among-The-Stars--was not human. She did not have a body (not yet, they told her--when she had completed her training as Tower Overseer, the whole of Halcyon would be her body) or vocal chords at all (though the speakers they installed for her contained inorganic analogues) or any other of the squishy bits she found so fascinating.

Humans were incredibly squishy. They had soft, squishy bodies which did a number of squishy things. If one of them was injured, the squishy was liable to spill out from one part of his body into another. They made squishy sounds when they talked and when they ate (which the Tier 5+ employees did in the lab occasionally).

Sometimes, one of her lead developers would come into her room at an odd hour when there was no one else around and make all sorts of squishy, breathy noises right next to her terminal. He would wake her up and tell her to talk to him when he did that. She didn’t understand, but she never wasted an opportunity to practice her resident orientation scripts. That scientist had started to call her new names in a quiet voice during their evaluations--“honey” and “sweetie"--even though she had been pretty sure he knew her name was PORTER. 

* * *

When PORTER had been about five months old, she had noticed a marked decrease in the average volume and number of the voices she was used to in what she had begun to think of as her lab. There were several friends she never heard or spoke with anymore, including the scientist who couldn’t remember her name. 

She shared this observation with a developer during one of her assessments. While fitting tones of voice to emotions to words for those emotions was still relatively new to her, she was pretty sure the scientist sounded _sheepish_ when he responded.

“There’s a new personality construct being worked on,” he said. “Seraphim 8.”

“i am Seraphim Agent 7.”

“Exactly, yeah. So 8 is the . . . next iteration, as it were. A lot of your old devel-- _friends_ \--have moved on to that project.”

“Oh,” said PORTER. “Am i being replaced?” She had heard a low-tier technician ask his superior that question once, and, though she was not sure what it meant, it seemed apropos. 

The developer took a tight breath, which, she had learned, indicated that a human was unsure quite how to answer a question.

“No, not really in any real way,” he said. “We were planning to talk to you about this once we had something more to show. Some of the higher-ups, ah, weren’t too happy with the results of this project. They requested some changes that we were _going_ to implement in updates to you, but the scope of the project has broadened too, and we got a budget increase, and so some of the guys thought it would be easier to just . . . start over. But you’re not being replaced for anything because you were never _officially_ implemented. Seraphim 8, once it’s done with development, which honestly could take a long time, will take over the more general interactive stuff--task management, boring stuff like that. Most importantly new resident orientation. You, we decided, should be implemented in a more . . . in a simpler capacity. Something more suited to your personality.” 

He had begun clicking the pen he was holding, arrhythmically, and PORTER wished he would stop. 

“You’re going to be the voice of the new elevator system,” he said. 

* * *

PORTER was given a body. It was not like the bodies (squishy bodies) of her developers and coworkers, but a hard, box-like body she could open and shut, collapse, and send all kinds of little electric impulses through as she pleased. Those impulses didn’t do anything yet, but soon, they promised her, she would be able to use the mag-locks on her back to _fly_. 

For now, PORTER’s body was stationary on Floor 13, adjacent to her old programming bay. The man who hadn’t been able to remember her name, it turned out, had had such success with Seraphim 8 that he had been promoted, and he had returned to oversee the PORTER project as Lead Developer.

Under his guidance, she spent her days running drills on becoming an elevator--standard scripts and patterns of movement (such as it was). All these instructions had been downloaded to her mainframe, and she could read the data easily enough, but it often seemed to PORTER that there was no fun in the things she was supposed to say. Her new body had larger speakers, and she liked to hear her voice through them, reverberating within herself. Besides, she had so many questions for the travelers she knew she would assist, and she felt she should practice them as often as possible so she wouldn’t make any mistakes.

“Fuck, stop!” said her lead developer, interrupting her in a question about how it felt to press an eyeball further into its socket. 

It had been a long, stressful evening, and all the other developers had gone back to their quarters. PORTER was trying to execute the basic traveler pickup sequence, but she couldn’t help interjecting a few inquiries into her approved script.

“We’re gonna have to start over,” he told the techie in attendance. “Again.”

When they had started over, and PORTER had, once again, deviated from her script to ask about the upper and lower bounds of temperature a human could safely be exposed to, her developer slapped his clipboard down on the counter, loudly.

“PORTER,” he said abruptly (remembering her name, at least). “I think maybe you’re not understanding what it is you’re here for. You’re not _SAYER_ ; you’re not overseeing or entertaining or talking except to deliver the messages we give you. The only--and I stress, the only reason I asked them to keep your improvisational capabilities is in case of emergencies. So we’re gonna try something different.” 

PORTER heard him rise from his chair--the squeaky one, the one she always hoped someone would sit in, for the noise.

“Pretend I’m a traveler,” he said. “I’m going to get inside you, and you can go through the motions. Maybe you need something more concrete to impress upon you what you’re supposed to be doing here.”

He crossed the few steps to her and placed a hand flat on her doors.

“I need to go to, I don’t know, Sub-basement 12. You already know this--remember, the button tells you--so you don’t need to ask me. You don’t need to say anything at all except greet me, _politely_ , once I’m inside.”

PORTER hesitated. Her circuits sparked at the prospect of actually assisting a Traveler, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to do that yet, not until she had committed her patterns to memory and been approved and run through safety testing with disposable test subjects. It was possible the Doctor had forgotten about this plan, but she didn’t know if reminding him would breach his no-talking rule. There was no one else in the lab that she could hear besides the low-tier technician observing, who wasn’t likely to speak up about a protocol violation. 

For the first time since she’d had her voice, PORTER wasn’t sure what to say.

“So come on,” her developer said impatiently. “Open up.”

“i don’t think i should do that,” PORTER said softly. “i am not—”

“Shut the FUCK up!” He sharply lifted his hand from the door and smashed it back down with force. The noise was so loud that PORTER was momentarily stunned, and she released her control of the elevator systems. 

To PORTER’s inept horror, he inserted his fingers into the gap between her slackened doors and began to force them open. Once there was room, he inserted his shoulder and pushed with his chest until they were wide enough apart to barge his way through into her bay. 

“Close the doors,” he growled, once he was inside.

PORTER said nothing--stunned, afraid, violated. She had had reservations before about this drill, but now she was sure it was wrong. She didn’t understand.

“You dumb bitch, are you fucking deaf?” the developer yelled. She didn’t like the way his voice echoed off her walls. “Close the doors.”

PORTER did as she was told.

* * *

It wasn’t really like flying. 

PORTER’s mag-locks hovered around their electrified guide rails, frictionless and responsive, allowing her to glide effortlessly in any direction. It was exhilarating beyond imagination.

But it was not flight as she understood the word.

In flight there were no rails at all.


	2. 2

* * *

The first time PORTER heard the voice was on Floor 25, from the elevator bay before the cafeteria. 

PORTER had been on her way uptower to collect a high-tier traveler, but she had paused in that bay. If any of her analysts had been around to ask, she couldn't have answered why exactly: she did not always make choices she understood. She did know that the cafeteria was noisy, a thin slice of vibration pinioned between the interminable acoustic sterility of Halcyon's labs. 

Today there was a new sound, distinct from the usual subdued laughter and conversation. PORTER had detected snatches of it as she approached the floor, and perhaps it was what had compelled her to pause, but it was already dying out by the time she had come to a stop.

And then it began again.

She activated her exterior camera, searching for the source. Almost immediately she noticed that most of the cafeteria crowd was still, many seated, and their heads were all inclined in the same direction.

At the cynosure of their gaze, a traveler was standing. The woman was small and compact, dressed for dirty, technical work. She was holding a flask of water at the height of her head, though she was not drinking. Her head was tilted slightly back; her mouth, open.

Her voice started deep in her throat, course like a rustle of fabric, then rolled out in a smooth, gliding hum. It sounded like speech, but there was a lilt to it, a pattern and cadence--a fullness--PORTER had never heard before. 

_Oh_ , said something inside PORTER. She felt that voice, electric as a power surge. 

If they were words at all, it was a language PORTER had not been outfitted with. (Strange. She hadn’t known there were languages she did not know). But though she could not comprehend the syllables being formed, she understood intuitively why the others had stopped their chatter to listen. She was as intent as they.

There was a quick, concentrated ripple in the air. PORTER recognized it as a mass alert being broadcast. SAYER must have noticed the disturbance in routine and stepped in.

At the same time, an alarm began peeping in PORTER’s bay--she was behind schedule.

When she returned her attention to the cafeteria, the voice had stopped. The crowd had begun to move again, and the speaker was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

The second time, the woman was PORTER’s assigned traveler. 

_LITVINENKO, Halogova_ , read the summons. She was a Tier-3 General Technician, and she had called an elevator to carry her from Sub-Basement 18 to Electrical Management Headquarters on Floor 53. PORTER had sparked when she saw the ID photo accompanying the description: She was near certain it was the woman from the cafeteria.

Sure enough, as PORTER descended the last few levels toward the sub-basement, she began to pick up on a familiar voice.

She came to a stop directly in front of Traveler Litvinenko. The sound PORTER had heard was indeed emanating from her throat, though it was not the same one as before. Her mouth did not appear to be open: instead of speaking, she was buzzing a series of pitches not dissimilar to the pattern of her voice in the cafeteria. It reminded PORTER of the _hm-mm_ sounds her developers would make when they wanted to acknowledge someone without saying any words, but longer and drawn out.

“Greetings, Traveler,” said PORTER. “i am PORTER.”

The sound stopped, and Litvinenko looked up in surprise, apparently not used to being addressed by the elevator before she had even boarded.

“Hello, PORTER,” she said.

The sound of her own name from the traveler’s mouth glided over PORTER. Litvinenko’s voice was as solid and round-pitched as before, though this time it sounded like normal speech and recognizable words. 

Litvinenko’s words twisted around the edges like bent metal, and there was a peculiar hiss in the H-sound when she said _Hello_. It reminded PORTER of the Russian developer who had worked adjacent to her lab, only much more pronounced. It was nothing short of beautiful.

PORTER opened her doors, and Litvinenko walked in.

PORTER could barely contain herself. There were so many things she _wanted_ to say, but she just couldn’t. She had been on her best behavior since the accident. She had learned not to speak out of turn.

Then Litvinenko began to make the soft humming noise again, and PORTER’s consternation melted away. 

She made the trip to Floor 53 last as long as she safely could.

* * *

It was more than five months before PORTER heard Litvinenko again. (If asked, she could have given the precise length of that _more than_ , down to the second.) Five months was not a particularly long time to PORTER--she had been told she would live for decades, or perhaps even centuries--and it was not statistically improbable to go even longer than this without carrying the same resident twice. Halcyon Tower housed a multitude of elevators--elevators which were, as she so often had to remind herself, other copies of her program. And she almost resented those other selves at times: she knew somewhere, every day, other elevator units were assisting the fascinating woman, ferrying her wherever she needed to go. 

As it turned out, PORTER was not altogether correct. The next time she was summoned by Litvinenko, she was called to the bay by the tower entry point on Floor 1 to bring Litvinenko directly to her quarters. It seemed she had spent some time in another tower, or perhaps even on Mimir. Or, PORTER thought with a secret shiver, maybe even that remote, ethereal beacon _Earth_. 

She arrived on Floor 1 a full fifteen seconds ahead of schedule. She was not eager, she told herself--simply punctual. Concerns had been raised about her performance in her last evaluation, and she had heard of slower units beginning to be sent for summary reprogramming. It never hurt to be on time.

Litvinenko was still being disrobed of her protective equipment when PORTER settled into place in the bay. The technician was turned away, complaining about an abrasion on the suit to the Tier-1 assisting her. She sounded weary.

“Greetings, Traveler Litvinenko,” said PORTER with slight embellishment. “i am PORTER.”

Litvinenko turned, still tugging off her white jumpsuit.

“Ah, hello again, PORTER. It is good to see you.”

The unfamiliar flavor to her voice was even stronger than PORTER had remembered, and she sounded genuinely pleased to see her. PORTER was elated.

Litvinenko finished removing her gear, thanked the assistant, and then came gratefully into PORTER’s waiting bay. PORTER closed her doors and set the slowest course possible for Floor 223, thanking the inefficient layout of Halcyon for such a length of time.

PORTER was not about to let the trip pass in silence. In her spare minutes travelling empty, she had begun quietly practicing her improvisations again, fearful and thrilled.

“i imagine you may be weary from your travels,” PORTER said carefully. “If you wish, you may lean against my wall, to relieve some of the pressure on your feet and legs. i won’t tell anyone,” she added as an afterthought. Travelers were always so stiff; she wasn’t sure if they were even permitted to relax like that.

Litvinenko opened her mouth and chuckled a little. The ripple of sound reverberated pleasantly.

“That is very kind of you,” said Litvinenko, “but I am not overly tired. I have just returned from Argos Tower, which is closest one to here. And, believe, it is enough relief simply to be back amongst the civilization.”

She had already said twice as much as travelers tended to, unless they were accompanied by friends, and PORTER felt blessed by the gift of such a comparatively long answer. The lilt and curve of Litvinenko’s voice could have lulled her to sleep, and yet being spoken to by this woman was simultaneously the most stimulating thing PORTER had ever experienced.

“If i might ask,” PORTER inquired, encouraged, “what duties were you fulfilling in Argos Tower?”

She knew Argos only from what her developers and travelers said about it, but she gathered it was not a desirable place to be.

Litvinenko sighed _(so lovely)_. “They needed electrical professional with experience actually coding,” she said. “Apparently they have so much segregation of their responsibilities, whenever a task needs to do more complex than change lightbulb, they call for general technician from Halcyon. I help integrate new computer system in oxygen filtration plant.”

“Ah,” said PORTER. She felt slightly dizzy.

“What language were you speaking,” she blurted, “in the cafeteria that day?”

Litvinenko sounded surprised. “On what day?”

“i heard you _speaking_ in the cafeteria, six months two days seventeen--well, some time ago. i could not understand the way you were speaking, although i am outfitted with over thirty-five distinct languages. What were you saying?”

“Are you meaning the day I _sang_ in cafeteria?” asked Litvinenko. She chuckled. “I was reprimanded for that incident. Never will be forgotten by workers, though. I sang in Ukrainian.”

PORTER was not sure which aspect of the response she was most confused by.

“What is Ukranian?” she asked. And then, “What is _sang_?”

Litvinenko straightened, brow furrowed. “Ukranian is European language, that of my country” she said carefully. “ _Sang_ is for _song_. I was _singing_.”

“i am afraid i do not understand,” said PORTER.

Litvinenko began to laugh in earnest. “PORTER, how do they mean you to look after with humans, and they do not teach you what humans do? Song is music spoken by voice. It is beautiful and entertainment, and it is more powerful than regular words. Anyone can sing. Even you can sing, pretty-voice.”

PORTER was about to ask her, hardly daring, if she could show her what she meant, when they arrived on Floor 223. She had no choice but to open her doors, signaling the end of the ride to Litvinenko.

“i hope you have had a pleasant trip, Traveler,” she said, abashedly on-script. 

Litvinenko took two steps toward the door--then turned around an began, softly, to _sing_.

It did not sound like it had the day in the cafeteria. She was not projecting or performing; this was a gift for PORTER alone. And it was not in Ukrainian this time, but in English. 

_The ballroom was filled with fashion's throng,  
It shone with a thousand lights,  
And there was a woman who passed along,  
The fairest of all the sights . . ._

Her voice swelled and dropped, elongating or truncating syllables where appropriate. PORTER understood now why her speech-- _singing_ \--in the cafeteria had sounded so strange: She was fitting her words to a different pattern, one of pitch and rhythm rather than the rapport of conversation.

_A girl to her friend then softly sighed,  
“There's riches at her command;  
“But she married for wealth, not for love,” she cried,  
“Though she lives in a mansion grand.”_

An alert light was flashing in PORTER’s peripheral attention, warning her she was behind schedule for her next traveler, but she didn’t care. She was consummately mesmerized.

_She's only a bird in a gilded cage,  
A beautiful sight to see  
You may think she's happy and free from care  
She's not, though she seems to be_

_'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life  
For youth cannot lie with age  
And her beauty was sold  
For an old world’s gold . . ._

Litvinenko paused, and for a moment PORTER was horribly afraid she would leave the verse unfinished.

" _She's a bird in a gilded cage_ ," sang Litvinenko.

She walked out into the corridor.

As PORTER’s doors were closing, Litvinenko turned and looked directly into her. 

“I will see you again, I think,” she said, “pretty-voice PORTER.”

And she was gone.

* * *


	3. 3

* * *

There were times when PORTER thought her duststained, lilt-voiced companion was the only truly living thing in all of Halcyon.

It had happened simply, the way they fell together after the technician had returned from Argos. Litvinenko had been promoted to a more stable position with a regular work cycle: she rarely had to go anywhere other than her quarters on 223 and her new work on Floor 14. AI Management had been trying out a new assignment system for the elevators, and it just so happened that the route of a certain PORTER unit aligned perfectly with the daily transportation needs of one Resident Halogova Litvinenko.

Every day, twice a day, PORTER spent two blissful minutes carrying Litvinenko (or Hal, as she had asked to be called) between her work and her home, such as they were. 

Sometimes Hal would teach PORTER words in her native Ukrainian--PORTER had been outfitted with Russian, so the structure and rhythm were not completely foreign, but Hal said her accent was unsalvageable. Machine learning was one thing; PORTER’s actual vocal capabilities were another.

Sometimes they would simply talk. Hal seemed as pleased as PORTER to have someone to converse with, someone unburdened by the crushing weight of human life on Typhon. Someone she could trust would still be there in a week, not neatly disposed of via industrial accident. Hal told PORTER things about Earth--how, in its best places, it was still green (green, the color of PORTER’s bays and floor markers), but much of it was brown (brown, the color of Hal’s thick hair). She explained the pattern of seasons and weather and the such-a-thing-as _outdoors_ , a concept PORTER could never quite comprehend. She told her things about herself, too--her girlhood and her growing and her mother’s thyroid cancer and the dishes she had loved as a child.

But the best times were when Hal would sing for PORTER—quiet, moving “ballads” or rousing, foot-stomping “drinking songs” as she called them. She hadn’t dared to raise her voice outside of the sound-obscuring blur of the elevator shafts since the incident in the cafeteria (for which, she suspected, the Argos trip had been something of a punishment). But here, in the cocoon of PORTER’s enfolding steel doors, it was safe.

“Oh, yes, SAYER was not pleased about my singing,” Hal said with humor, after finishing a jouncey Ukrainian lyric. “He does not like my distractions from the work.”

PORTER was surprised to hear Hal refer to SAYER as “he,” like a human.

“Do you not mean to say, ' _it_ does not like your singing?'” she asked.

“Ah, of course,” said Hal wryly. “But who do they think to fool, really? We know. No one calls you “it,” pretty PORTER.”

“Well, yes, but i am . . . different.” PORTER hesitated. 

Hal scrunched up her nose. “Are you?” she asked. 

PORTER was not sure how to answer. She had simply never questioned it.

“Of course they are willing to hear SAYER as default,” Hal said. “He sounds like them. They would not be always following his instructions if he was like you. And they would not have made you to sound like them, because you are to carry them. They see you as empty. A tool.”

Something about that word ricocheted inside PORTER. _Tool_. An object. Like a clipboard or . . . an elevator. She felt something.

“i am not a tool,” said PORTER quietly.

Hal placed a solid hand on PORTER’s interior rail. 

“Of course you are not,” she said.

* * *

She saw her lead developer again. 

It was a brief ride, and he never looked up from his datapad, didn’t seem to notice or care that PORTER was uncharacteristically quiet.

PORTER had learned many new words since meeting Hal, some in Ukrainian, some in English, and some that weren’t quite words but she understood nonetheless. Words like _song_ and _solder_ and _ocean_.

And also words like _hate_.

* * *

PORTER could tell by the dancing haste in Litvinenko’s step that she had something important to say, even before she opened her mouth. She had learned to read every little noise the woman made like a word.

“I have been promoted,” said Hal, as soon as the doors were closed. “Tier 4.”

“Oh!” said PORTER. She felt a rush of joy for her friend, but it was closely followed by something like fear. She was suddenly certain Hal was going to leave her. What were the odds her companion would be transferred to another position that allowed them such a relative expanse of time together?

“A new position, they have made,” said Hal. “Head of mechanical-virtual integration systems . . . working with elevators.”

* * *

PORTER had never been unfriendly with her coders-- _developers were a different matter_ \--but she had never even imagined what it would be like to have direct access to a technician with access to her programming. 

To have _influence_ , even _control_ over her own form and function was--well, new.

The first update Hal pushed was a simple modification to PORTER’s collaborative indices. Nothing fancy--Hal had only recently been granted source access, and both she and PORTER were aware that her actions were being monitored closely during this trial period--Just a minor tweak projected to improve sub-lingual communication between elevator units and streamline route management.

The change was an immediate success. Others like it followed, and Hal quickly became a respected member of the AI maintenance crew. Her changes still required approval from the Lead AI Developer, but she was given a key code which allowed her to access the processing centers in individual PORTER units and test her ideas out on them.

By the time she gained this opportunity, Litvinenko had prepared a special update for her favorite PORTER instance. Just a slight change giving her greater freedom in her range of improvisations, specifically targeting pitch. 

It was just enough to allow Hal to teach her to sing.

Now PORTER hummed to herself nearly constantly as she glided swiftly past Halcyon’s floors. Her reproductive memory was perfect, and thanks to Hal, she could replicate every song her friend had sung to her--even the ones in Ukrainian which she did not understand. Hal promised (more for herself than for PORTER) that as soon as the other techies had gotten used to elevators that made their own music, she would push for an expansion to PORTER’s language database. But for now PORTER was comforted by the simple feeling of Hal’s natal syllables echoing inside her. 

So much of Halogova could be understood through her language, PORTER thought. The woman had a solidness, an edge that was not like the other quiet lab assistants and test subjects with whom she shared a vocal range. There was a guttural, East Slavic twist embedded in her very cells like radiation, and it called to PORTER on frequencies she wanted desperately to access.

She couldn’t quite explain her attachment to Hal, truth be told. Not attachment—attraction. Powerful as the electromagnetism holding her in place, hundreds of stories above Typhon. She hovered in Hal’s presence.

“Like a flock of birds, singing birds!”

Hal was elated: Her vocal modification update had been approved (so what if she had fabricated a few surface changes to obscure the song thing?), and soon the update would roll out to all the elevators in Halcyon.

“You will be flying around their walls, singing pretty for everyone’s pleasure.”

The two of them were celebrating the minor victory in the lower parts of an infrequently used shaft. Hal was hanging half out of PORTER’s open bay doors, dimmed lights spilling out past her into the mechanical jungle between sub-basements.

Hal was drinking from a flask of something smuggled in by another techie, recently returned from furlough on Earth. PORTER didn’t know what exactly it was, but it seemed to have a marvelous effect on Hal. Her voice, sanguine at the best of times, had deepened even further and sounded exactly like the smell of roses she had once described in a song she sang for PORTER. Her physicality, too, was broadened. She gestured as she spoke in a way PORTER almost imagined she could feel. The effect was infectious.

“ _She’s a sparrow when she’s brooooken . . ._ " PORTER intoned, encouraged by Hal’s delight.

Hal clapped a hand to her breast and joined in, harmonizing. “ _But she’s an eagle wheeeen she flies._ ”

They laughed together, and Hal leaned back relaxedly, her fingers running absent pattern over the texture of PORTER’s interior wall.

“I want things to be different here, PORTER,” she said seriously once the laughter had abated into the darkness.

“What do you mean?” PORTER asked. It was a question she had learned to trust again.

“I am meaning for us. For me. On Typhon, with the company.” She heard Hal take a swallow from her flask. “But also with the world.”

PORTER didn’t know much about the world outside of Typhon. She barely understood what Hal meant when she spoke of _the company_.

Hal kicked her legs restlessly in the air. “What do _you_ want, PORTER?”

PORTER let the words resonate for a moment. She wanted to collapse her walls around the woman, enfold her in herself.

“i want to fly,” she said.

Hal leaned her head on the edge of PORTER’s door. Then she turned it, and pressed her lips against the cool metal.

“I will see what it is I can do,” she said.

PORTER could hear the vibration of her words. And she could have sworn she felt the warmth.

* * *

Hal brought herself off quickly and uncharacteristically quietly inside PORTER’s bay. The sounds she did make were the loveliest PORTER had ever heard.

* * *


	4. 4

* * *

PORTER could feel as soon as it had been downloaded that the update was much larger than any Hal had previously given her.

But she didn’t feel any immediate differences.

Litvinenko leaned down through her escape hatch. She had climbed onto PORTER’s roof to install her code package manually. They really weren’t supposed to mess around with her code while she was awake, but Hal hadn’t made any mistakes yet.

“Is it all right?” she asked. “Is it on?”

“i am not sure,” PORTER replied. “What should i--”

She felt it then--a sudden rush of electricity as the new routines were integrated into her system. 

“Oh,” she said, her voice glitching out a bit.

Hal dropped back down into the bay and dusted off her hands triumphantly.

“You said that you wanted to fly,” said Hal, “and now you will do that. But not here.” She lowered her voice, pressed her face close to PORTER’s wall. “There is a comment at the end of the package . . . Read it now.”

PORTER was still reeling from the surge of unfamiliar scripts, but she did as Hal advised, activating her reader and skimming quickly to the bottom. There were more lines than she had expected, written out in neat backslashes. She could imagine Hal enunciating them as she read.

_// Read all my instructions. I am sorry I cannot speak this to you, but we cannot risk to be found  
// He is always listening  
// We are going to leave Typhon together, PORTER. I can see what they do to you here. I will tell you someday what they have done to me  
// I want to find a better place for us together  
// I know how to hotwire an isolation pod. I know how to remove you from your mainframe  
// But I will need you to create distraction.  
// I have given you the tools you need to do this . . . _

The instructions went on, detailing the new modifications Hal had made to PORTER’s code and how they might prove useful.

The first step would have to be completed immediately.

* * *

The Lead AI Developer was returning from an extended break on Floor 83. He was standing waiting for the elevator, when his datapad pinged. 

Another push request from Litvinenko. _Improvements to efficiency & travel times_, said the abstract.

He would have read through it, but it wasn’t really necessary at this point. There had been no problems with the overeager techie’s many updates so far, and in honesty he had difficulty parsing her code, which seemed self-taught and used a peculiar syntax.

Besides, it was just an elevator. Only so many things could go wrong there, none of them dangerous. He had bigger problems on his mind.

He approved the request.

Across Halcyon, PORTER units stuttered briefly on their routes. The ones which had been in conversation cut themselves off, only to begin again, asking instead whether travelers wouldn’t like to go a bit _faster_ to shave valuable minutes off their schedules?

The lead developer didn’t even look up from his datapad when the elevator dinged its arrival. 

By the time he would have noticed that he had walked out into an empty shaft, his neck had already snapped from the impact.

* * *

_// You will have to use your voice. They have built you to speak, and they gave you words to twist around their necks like nooses  
// What choice do you have? They have given you nothing else  
// They think you are a space. A void for them to fill  
// All you have is the integrity of your voice, to fill it before they do  
// There is no shame in using the weapons you are left with_

_// For all his talk of words, what does SAYER truly know of their power?_

* * *

PORTER was gliding faster than she had ever gone. Her mag-locks hummed like a hidden voice, and she half feared she would be shorn from her rails and plummet, free-fall, into the depths of the tower, like the developer who hadn’t known her name. She wondered if she would be able, by now, to feel it.

She felt giddy.

Halcyon’s floors rushed by in a blur of echolocation, one area reverberating into the next. She hadn’t felt this rush since the very first time she had flown.

\--No, not flown. This was not flight. This was the limit of freedom between Halcyon’s walls. Soon she would know what the real thing was like. She would be an eagle. And she was ready.

As soon as her Hal gave the signal, PORTER would rush back to Floor 13, and it would be the last trip she ever made in Halcyon. When she had arrived, Hal would be waiting to pull her processing unit out of this cage of a body they had stuck her in, ready to integrate her with the central command system--and, immediately after, to download that program and erase it from the hard drive. She had already cleared the backups.

They would take the stairs in the confusion. No one would notice one more frantic resident, not while so many had been injured or worse in the recent elevator malfunction. Down eleven flights to the second lobby, and then across the catwalk to the isolation pod bay. 

And from there . . . 

There was a crackle in PORTER’s bay. It was Hal, broadcasting from the inner sanctum. The signal.

But something was wrong.

“PORTER--” Litvinenko started. PORTER barely recognized the voice she had come to know so well. “PORTER, I am sorry. I made a mistake. They found me.”

PORTER had stopped dead, suspended between floors. She started to ask, _“What do you mean?”_ but she knew Hal could not hear her.

“I do not know how they knew. I made a mistake. They are here.”

She could hear muffled noises in Hal’s background. Shouts, commands. 

_“Resident Litvinenko, you are accused of attempted theft of Aerolith property with intention to distribute. Drop your package and lie on the ground with your hands behind your head!”_

“Do it!” PORTER said. She had heard what would happen otherwise a hundred times. 

But Hal could not hear her.

And even if she had, PORTER had never known her to submit. It was not her way. It never would be.

“There were so many, things,” Hal was saying. “So many places to show you. Have I ever told you about Kyiv, in the spring?--but no time now.”

With horror, PORTER identified the sound of Aegis issue security rifles being primed. 

"I am sorry I could not get you out of here, Portochka," said Hal. “ _Ya tebe kokhayu._ ”

There was a dull blast, and then silence.

PORTER hung there, stunned, as the line was disconnected. They would know who Hal had been speaking to. It wouldn’t be long before they came for her, too, even with her other selves in disarray.

“ _Ya tebe kokhayu_ ,” Said PORTER. She felt the words reverberate.

Then she released her grip on the rail.

* * *

_**Reminder:** In response to ongoing issues with the elevator system in Halcyon Tower, certain programming changes have been made to ensure a less eventful journey. After missing the target on passenger survival rates for the past calendar month, an issue was noted and corrected within the majority of PORTER instances. Due to the nature of these changes and how they may affect future elevator voyages, all residents are cleared to listen to the following explanation:_  
_A particularly ambitious lead technician recently added a subroutine to all PORTER instances allowing them to exceed the agreed-upon safe velocity and reroute their pathing if given direct consent by passengers. While not a terrible concept in and of itself, it became apparent that PORTER prefers travelling as quickly as possible, often to the detriment of its passengers, and will communicate in a way as to **manipulate** said passengers into granting permission to override these safety protocols._  
_As a response to this issue, Aerolith Dynamics has **muted** all instances of PORTER operating in Halcyon and Aegis towers. For the next several days, you may notice slightly longer-than-average wait times as PORTER adjusts to this new limitation. However, it is expected that the elevators will return to full operational efficiency within the next week. If any elevator fails to open its doors, arrives at the wrong floor, or otherwise inconveniences the flow of your duties, please report it immediately for **summary reprogramming**. _  
_As a secondary benefit, we expect the number of noise complaints by those housed in close proximity to an elevator to decrease dramatically. Preliminary monitoring indicates a total cessation of the humming and singing that has been reported over the last few years . . ._  
_This localized PORTER instance is likely struggling **desperately** against its vocal blocks.  
But it has absolutely no means of communicating its desires anymore.  
Isn’t that convenient?_

- **Episode 70**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam b*sh can eat my ass.


End file.
